Thirteen Years
by Strangerine
Summary: Thirteen chapters, thirteen years. One scene for each year Elsa was alone. Cover Art belongs to boringmu @ DeviantArt.
1. Eight

Elsa didn't like her room. Without Anna's big bed at the opposite wall, the place felt empty and barren. Empty and big, but also confining. Sometimes Elsa dreamed about the walls closing in on her, squeezing her to a pulp as she screamed for help. Then she would wake up screaming, and mommy and daddy would run in. Daddy would hold a candle and mommy would pull Elsa into her arms, whispering comforts into her ear. Over her mother's shoulder, Elsa would see tiny Anna peek into the room, then be shuttled away by servants. And Elsa would cry.

Late at night, Elsa couldn't sleep. The moonlight illuminated the room, and Elsa felt her eyes close, dragging her into the darkness. But a jolt of fear would make the little girl's heart race, and a layer of frost would creep across the bed, and the floors and walls surrounding it.

Elsa didn't want to sleep. She didn't want to see the images the troll had conjured for her, of blood-red people hurting her for her magic. She didn't want to see Anna, cold and lifeless in her arms. She didn't want to see herself locked in her room, surrounded by angry voices and faces that pulled her hair and clothes. She didn't want the nightmares to come back.

Shivering, the small girl crept out of bed, her toes crunching in the snow on the floor. Elsa walked to the door, undoing the knob with a shaking hand and peeking out of the doorway. Snowflakes followed her as she sneaked across the hall, her bare feet padding on the wood flooring. No servants wandered the halls, and no voices hummed nearby to warn Elsa away. The ice princess reached her destination, opening the door with a creak that made her flinch, and stepping inside the room.

Anna's new bedroom was smaller, and decorated in rosy pink. They'd moved in Anna's old bed, and toys and drawings littered the floor. Elsa crept towards the bed, walking on her tiptoes to make as little sound as possible. The frost had increased, sending a physical chill into the room. The blond froze as Anna tossed in her sleep, pulling the blankets closer to her as ice covered the walls.

Elsa made her way to the bed, and watched as Anna rolled over in her sleep to face her. Mouth open, drooling and her hair a mess, Anna looked deep in slumber. Elsa smiled softly. She outstretched a hand, longing to cup her beloved sister's cheek. As she reached for Anna's face, the frost retracted, and Elsa didn't feel so afraid.

But before she could touch her sister, footsteps wafted in through the open door, and Elsa gasped. The frost returned, stronger, and Elsa raced out of the room, closing the door behind her and hurling herself into her room. No sooner than Elsa shut her own bedroom door and launched into her bed did the footsteps pass by. When the steps faded away, the ice princess relaxed and exhaled.

Elsa looked at her hands and watched, in horror, as frost spread from her hands to her blankets, and then across her bed.

The ice princess began to cry.

* * *

The next morning, as all the servants wondered why puddles of water were all over the hallway floors and in princess Anna's bedroom, Elsa heard her parents arguing again.

Most of the servants were let go after that.


	2. Nine

"The gloves feel itchy, Daddy."

"I know, sweetheart. It's for the best."

Elsa resisted the urge to pick at the fingers of her new, white gloves. Daddy said he'd they'd help her control her powers, but they felt strange. The surfaces of everything she touched felt muted, lacking texture and temperature. And they were not only itchy, but cold too. Of course, Elsa knew the cold came from her and not the gloves, but she didn't like to think about that.

Her father escorted her from his study, his hand on her shoulder as he guided her down the hall and back to her room. Elsa wished she didn't have to go back to her room. She wished her father would keep her out of sight behind when they passed guards and servants in the hall. She wished she didn't have to wear the itchy gloves.

Elsa returned to her room, her father smiling at her as he closed the door. The little girl did not return the smile. She turned away and walked to her bedroom, her hands twitching at her sides. Elsa pulled one of the thicker books off the shelf, grunted as she used all her meager strength to carry the large novel to her bed.

The book landed on the sheets with a heavy thump, and Elsa hoisted herself up on the mattress, leaning over the volume with wide eyes. Small fingers turned the cover and flipped the pages, the girl struggling to read the small text and complex paragraphs.

This was one of the books she had taken, stolen from her father's study late at night. When her mother read to her at night, Elsa would hear stories about princes and princesses, evil kings and queen, dragons and knights and magic. She liked those stories, but she knew they weren't real. They couldn't be, because in those stories the princess got rescued, or fell in love, or defeated the evil villain. In real life, there were no happy endings. Elsa knew this well.

But her father's books, Elsa liked those. She couldn't read the titles of most of them, but she liked deciphering the tiny words printed all across the pages and looking at the pictures. The book she toiled over today had pictures of strange, mechanical devices. She read about engines, and pulleys, and smoke and fire and electric light. She liked seeing how everything fit together and worked to make wonderful things happen. Things like printing books, or making a house warm, or helping farmers grow food.

Elsa couldn't stand the itching any more. She peeled the gloves from her hands and reached for the pages of the book, slicing her finger open in the process. She sucked air in through her teeth and snatched her hand away, squeezing her fingertip to see a drop of red blood appear above the skin. She frowned, put her finger in her mouth and got up off the bed, going to open the door of her bedroom and leave.

She crept down the hall, sucking on her finger and trying to find someone to bandage her. She rounded a corner and was about to call out when someone grabbed her arm in tight, rough grip. Elsa screamed and turned around, a jolt of fear and surprise running through her. She waved her hands in front of her and closed her eyes, flailing as she fought against the unseen stranger. Something burst through the air and cast a cool breeze across her face, and she heard the person holding her give out a cry and release her. Elsa pulled away and opened her eyes.

One of the new servants stood in front of her, a young man watching her with wide, fearful eyes as he clutched his side. Blood began to ooze through his shirt.

Behind her, Elsa heard loud voices and racing footsteps. She felt her mother sweep her up into her arms, pulling her away from the strange man. "Why aren't you wearing your gloves?" her mother whispered.

"I took them off," Elsa replied, beginning to cry as everyone started shouting.

"What are you doing here?"

"Why aren't you in the stable?"

"What were you doing with my daughter?" the last one Elsa identified as her father.

"I-I didn't mean anything," a nervous voice said. "I didn't recognize her, so I grabbed her and...she hit me with something."

A pause. "This man is bleeding. Fetch him a doctor."

The queen started walking back to Elsa's room, with Elsa watching over her mother's shoulder as she saw the man who had grabbed her collapse. Everyone hovered around him, and in the few minutes it took to carry Elsa back to her room, several men dressed as doctors ran over and crouched over the new servant. Soon, Elsa sat in her room, with her mother wrapping up her finger and talking to drown out the shouting in the hallway. Elsa never saw the young man again.

She never took off her gloves again, either.


	3. Ten

Soon after her tenth birthday, Elsa's father decided she needed to learn how to run the kingdom. As his oldest child, she would inherit the throne on her twenty-first birthday, and she would need to know how to lead her people. To his surprise, Elsa already knew a great deal about the intricacies of royal business, having read many books about it.

To Elsa, being responsible came naturally. Bearing the heavy burden of her own abilities made ruling a kingdom child's play. Ironic, really, since she was a child.

Today Elsa and her father sat in the king's study, Elsa's father acting as her private tutor. Elsa knew he didn't trust anyone else to do it. "But Elsa, what if you have a low production rate for the country? What if we couldn't compete with other nations? It's critical that we do so, being an-"

"Economy based nation. Yes father, I know." When had she started calling him father and not daddy? Elsa rattled off something she remembered from a book, something about the balance between taxation and regulation, and freedom of economic growth. The paragraph sounded good, and her father seemed pleased, but Elsa's mind was far away.

Her eyes lingered on the windows on the far wall, letting in a great deal of sunlight and warmth. Her natural cool kept her from feeling overheated or cold, allowing her to flourish in any climate. Elsa liked summer. In the winter, everything slept. The world went to bed, slumbering under sheets made of snow as mirrors of ice reflected the gray sky. The snowflakes made the world look white, and you could feel the life humming beneath the frozen skin of the earth. Alive, but controlled.

But in summer, the world bloomed. Snow melted, birds sang, and people came out of their houses to talk and laugh in the streets. Babies were born, adults fell in love, and no one wept at night for years lost to something they cannot control. No one cried in the summertime.

Elsa knew this, but from a distance. In the summertime, she would look out the window in her bedroom, gently parting the curtains so her pale, wan face could catch a ray of sun. She would smile then, as sounds and smells wafted in from the world below, a world she could never be part of. Sometimes small creatures would come and sit on her windowsill, and Elsa would watch as they pattered about on tiny feet before scurrying away.

One summer, a bird made a nest on her windowsill, and Elsa couldn't sleep in her own bed the rest of the season. She would sleep on the opposite side of the room as the window, curled in a ball and wrapped in her blankets, terrified she'd freeze the baby animals in her sleep. She didn't, but she could have.

As Elsa thought about this, her father watched her with sad eyes. After she'd finished answering his question with an answer recited from a book he'd read himself, she'd retreated into her own world, silent and far beyond his reach. She hadn't noticed he'd stopped speaking, staring out the window of his study with an emotionless expression on her face. Children were not supposed to hide their emotions so well at ten years old. It didn't feel right.

At times like these, the king would go to bed at night with a tight knot in his stomach. His wife would rub his shoulders and reassure them they'd done the best they could do and that was enough, but it _wasn't_. When a little girl can't feel, for fear of freezing her loved ones to icicles, "the best they could do" was not good enough.

Both father and daughter sat like that, lost in their respective contemplations, when Elsa looked from the window to her father with a strange intensity in her eyes. "Father," she said, "why can't I go outside?"

The king jerked, both from being ripped from his thoughts and the surprising question. "Well," he said, clearing his throat, "Someone could see you, Elsa. You wouldn't be safe."

"Then don't let anyone see me," Elsa said, but her father heard the note of disappointment and sadness in her voice. "Just let me walk out in the private gardens. I won't hurt anyone."

The man's heart clenched. "Very well," he said, forcing a smile that he knew Elsa would see through. "We can cordon off one of the gardens be yours, and yours alone. Would you like that?"

A small, innocent smile spread across the girls face. "Yes, Father. I would."


	4. Eleven

With a grunt, the eleven-year old let the heavy books fall to her desk, raising a small cloud of dust. Thin fingers set a piece of paper on the table, and a pen laid down beside it. Elsa opened her dusty books and turned up the lamp on the side of her desk, peering at the small letters to decipher the words. A few minutes reading told her the authors of these books seemed more concerned with promoting their other works than teaching her how to tell a story, but Elsa pressed on.

She'd decided she wanted to write a book, because she liked reading books and thought it would be nice to read her own stories. "And it can't be that hard," she muttered, flipping pages and coughing in the rising dust. "Anybody can tell a story."

But when Elsa sat there, her thick books piled around her as she held her quill and stared into the paper placed in front of her, she began to have more respect for authors. "Where do I start?" she wondered aloud. "Well," she sniffed. "There has to be a hero." Her quill began to write.

_Once upon a time, there was a thirteen-year old girl._

"She's a little older than me," Elsa said to herself. "So she can do more things."

_She was tall, and pretty, and happy._

"That sounds nice."

_And she lived with her happy family, and she had lots of brothers and sisters, and she had lots of friends_.

"Good, but what now?" Elsa paused. "There has to be a villain, or nothings going to happen. Something the little girl has to fight." The girl struggled for inspiration, and her growing frustration make frost climb across the wood of the desk. Even with her gloves on, if she didn't pay attention the ice would start. She scowled at the ice, then turned and began to write._  
_

_And one day, an evil sorceress came to her town and turned everyone to ice.  
_

"Oh, that's good." Elsa liked that. An evil sorceress sounded like a good villain. It occurred to her, while enchanted with her epic tale, that she ought to have a title. But what would be a good title? Going back to her original idea, Elsa turned the paper over and scribbled something else down.

_Snow_.

But snow couldn't be a real title, could it? It didn't sound very good, so Elsa scratched that out and wrote something else instead.

_Snow Man_.

That didn't make any sense, either. Elsa didn't even have any snowmen in her story. Besides, snowmen were nice, and friendly. They liked to give warm hugs, too, or so Elsa had always thought, until-

Elsa shook her head, shook away the bad memories. She ignored the sickness in her stomach and went back to the paper, crossing out and rewriting the title once more.

_Snow Queen_.

Oh, that was good. That could be the name of the evil sorceress, come to attack the tall, pretty girl. Just one more thing.

_The Snow Queen._

Elsa sat back in her chair and smiled. 'The Snow Queen' sounded like a good title. Under the words, Elsa began to draw a picture of the sorceress, making her look as wicked as she could imagine. Sharp, pointed features, long hair and a flowing dress covered the paper. Without thinking, Elsa drew an outstretched arm, covered with a glove. The palm of the Snow Queen began to sprout snowflakes, frost ascending into the air...

Elsa blinked. She dropped the quill and looked down at her hands. Gloved hands. She reached up to touch her face, the delicate. pointed cheekbones and chin. Her dress fell down to her ankles, and her hair hung loose to her shoulders. In horror, Elsa realised she had drawn herself. In her mind, she was the evil snow queen.

The room went very cold. The walls and floors became coated with ice, and the furniture became frozen solid. Shaken and afraid, Elsa slowly stood up and went to empty her toy box. Once the toys sat strewn across the floor, Elsa put her papers and books inside the box, and slid the box under her bed.

Then Elsa laid on her bed and curled up into a ball. She did not move, and she did not cry. If she didn't cry, the frost wouldn't come. And if the frost didn't come, she was Elsa, not the Snow Queen.


	5. Twelve

Elsa lifted her head to the sky and sniffed the air. The smell of flowers and damp grass filled her nose and her mind, making a smile spread across her face. Birds chirped in the blossoming trees around her, and Elsa knelt on the ground to weave a flower garland. She'd read about them in books, seeing them on faeries heads and in grass-weaving manuals, because someone cared enough to write such a thing. And if it existed to read, Elsa read it.

Her thin, nimble fingers pulled the strands of grass through each other, making an interlocked web of grass with multi-colored flowers tied in. Elsa set it down on her head, and took special care to keep in balanced as she stepped along the path. When she passed one of the artificial streams that lived in the castle gardens, she bit her lower lip as a fit of excitement took over her.

Sliding the shoes from her feet, Elsa put her toes into the cool water and hiked up her skirts to step in fully. Chills sparked up her spine as the water rushed past her ankles, and a wide smile spread across her face. She dropped her skirts and began to dance around in the water, letting the water absorb into her dress and splash over her legs while she laughed. She imagined herself as one of the spring faeries in her books, girls with long limbs and pointed faces like her. They wore dresses made of flower petals and had long hair, and possessed wings of gossamer that let them fly high above the trees.

Elsa knelt down and splashed water up into her face, giggling as dragonflies and butterflies flitted around her. The garden at springtime was one of her favorite places to be.

A stick snapped a few few away, and Elsa froze. The forest had gone silent, save for the sound of the bubbling stream. Now, the water felt less comforting and more eerie. Elsa balled her hands into fists, and the water at her feet grew colder. "Who's there?" A pause. No reply. "I am the princess. Reveal yourself."

A heavy foot splashed into the water outside of her peripheral vision, and Elsa screamed. The river froze solid, and Elsa turned around in time to release her feet from the ice and throw a ball of frost at the unseen approacher. She heard a grunt as it made contact, and she staggered backward with both hands out in front of her.

A boy, a year or so older than her, sat on the ice with one foot frozen in the river. Snow had exploded all over his face, leaving pinpricks of red where tiny shards of ice had cut his skin. He had blue eyes and brown hair, and his mouth fell open as he looked at her. Their heads both jerked to the side as shouting and footsteps came from the distance, the royal guards alert by Elsa's shriek. When Elsa looked back, the boy had gone, leaving only a trail of footprints in the sudden layer of snow and a shoe frozen in the river.

Elsa blinked, and turned around to see her flower garland crushed on the ice beneath her. In her panic, it had fallen off and she'd crushed it.

* * *

Elsa found out later that the boy had been one of the assistant gardeners, since then had been let go. With the amount of guards stationed around the gardens increased, Elsa got to go out again a week later.

She returned to the spot where she had first seen the boy. The river had melted again, and the spring animals had resumed their cheerful noises. Elsa was about to leave, not ready to return to the sight of her fright, when she saw something that caught her attention.

Stepping forward, she found a folded piece of paper and a flower garland sat atop a rock, safe from the spray of the river but kept out of sight. Elsa examined the garland. Made from flowers she didn't have in her part of the garden, it looked exotic and fantastical, and when she put it on her head it felt only a little big. Nervous, Elsa read the note. In sloppy, childlike letters, it read:_  
_

_dear princess Elsa,_

_Im sorry I scared you. I thought you were a faery._

_I made this for you to replace your old one_

_From,_

The name at the bottom of the paper looked like it had been written and scratched out several times, before being left unknown. A small smile crept along Elsa's face, and she tucked the note into her dress.

* * *

She kept the garland long after it dried out, pressing the flowers into a book. She kept the book by her bed every night.


End file.
